Are we ready to embrace a cleaner, healthier future?

Imagine preparing a warm meal without burning a single piece of wood, overly relying on an abundant supply of charcoal that emits a wisp of harmful smoke, or depending on an unreliable electricity supply. That’s the power of solar-aided cookstoves—a game-changer for sustainability, public health, and energy access.

Why Solar Cook Stoves Matter
Nearly 2.4 billion people still rely on traditional biomass fuels for cooking, leading to deforestation, indoor air pollution, and severe health risks. Solar-aided cookstoves offer a clean, efficient, and renewable alternative, using solar power to reduce fuel consumption while ensuring reliable cooking, even in off-grid areas. These cookstoves are the ideal bridge towards a sustainable future for the most underserved communities across the globe. Solar being widely prevalent makes for the right catalyst in this technology as it can be utilised with little to no investment.

Innovation Meets Impact
These stoves often integrate solar panels and thermal batteries, storing energy to function even after sunset. The designs themselves have been optimised to cut fuel use by at least 50%, lower household expenses, and significantly reduce carbon footprints—making them an ideal solution for both rural and urban settings. As solar-aided cook stoves continue to evolve, they do so by also adhering to the comfort zones of the communities they serve. Change is never easy and for a society wherein survival matters most, the incentive to switch to a new way of cooking has to be more economically viable as opposed to merely sustainable.

Empowering Communities
Beyond the numerous environmental benefits, solar cookstoves empower women and children, who often bear the burden of fuel collection and exposure to toxic fumes. By providing a safer, more sustainable option, they enhance health, enable education, and promote economic opportunities.

The Wide Variety
Solar-aided cook stoves tend to differ drastically in their functionality and hence can be optimised for the communities they are serving particularly based on the raw materials that are widely accessible.

Solar Thermal-Assisted Cookstoves: These ideally are known to use a solar collector (like a parabolic dish, evacuated tubes, or flat plate collectors) to absorb and concentrate sunlight.

The heat is then either transferred directly to the cooking vessel or used to preheat a working fluid (like oil or water) that stores and releases heat when needed. Based purely on the principles of thermodynamics these stoves are viable throughout the day.

The Drawbacks :

• Weather Dependent: They need consistent sunlight to function optimally; cloudy or rainy days reduce efficiency.
• Large Setup Required: Parabolic dishes or collectors take up significant space.
• Slow Heating: Heating takes longer compared to direct gas or electric stoves.
• High Initial Cost: Good quality solar collectors and thermal storage systems can be relatively expensive.

Hybrid Solar-Biomass Cookstoves: As the name suggests a hybrid cookstove combines solar heat and biomass fuel (pellets, or agricultural waste). During sunny hours, solar heat reduces the biomass requirement, leading to cleaner combustion and fewer emissions.

Some models are equipped with thermal storage (e.g., phase change materials) to retain heat for cooking after sunset.

The Drawbacks :

• Still Uses Biomass: While it reduces fuel use, it doesn’t eliminate smoke or emissions.
• Complex Design: More components mean higher maintenance and potential technical failures.
• Limited Adoption: Requires people to adapt to new cooking methods, which may not always be culturally accepted. (Radical change is always met with resistance)
• Costly Materials: Advanced models with heat storage or improved combustion can be expensive.

Solar-Electric Hybrid Cookstoves: These designs integrate solar panels that generate electricity to power an induction or electric cooktop. They can also be designed to power fans that aid in the combustion of volcanic rocks which are known to retain heat for longer, directly reducing the amount of fuel necessary for cooking.

Some designs store the generated energy in batteries, ensuring cooking can continue even when sunlight is unavailable, Making them ideal for off-grid locations or remote communities where electricity is limited or expensive.

The Drawbacks :

• Expensive Setup: High-quality solar panels, batteries, and inverters significantly increase the upfront cost.
• Battery Dependency: Cooking at night or on cloudy days requires battery storage, which degrades over time.
• Limited Power Output: If solar power is insufficient, cooking may be slower or intermittent.
• Requires Skilled Installation: Setting up a solar-electric system properly requires expertise.

Solar Box Cookers (Standalone Solar Cookstoves): These designs are optimised to use insulated boxes with reflective panels to trap and retain solar heat. They operate without any other fuel but are slower and mostly suitable for low-temperature cooking like boiling, steaming, and slow cooking.

The Drawbacks :

• Slow Cooking Speed: Takes much longer than conventional stoves (several hours for some foods).
• Limited Temperature Range: Cannot reach high temperatures needed for frying or fast cooking.
• Daytime Only Use: Completely useless at night or in poor weather.
• Large and Bulky: It takes up space and isn’t very portable for frequent movement.

Factors to Consider for any solar aided cooking innovation :

• Adoption Barriers: Many people prefer traditional stoves due to familiarity and ease of use.
• Space Requirement: Most solar-aided stoves need outdoor space and proper positioning for sunlight.
• Durability Concerns: Reflectors, solar panels, and heat storage components can degrade over time.

A widely acceptable design needs to cater for the aforementioned issues at the very least along with being both economically viable and less resource intensive.

Scaling the Future of Clean Cooking
Support from policymakers, businesses, and innovators is pivotal to furthering the cause of solar-aided cooking and spearheading the campaign towards sustainable and more climate-conscious cooking worldwide. Solar-aided cookstoves could redefine how the world cooks, and given the right amount of research and innovation, they could be the catalyst for change in both the developing and developed worlds.

The question is: Are we ready to embrace a cleaner, healthier future?

Vikrant Joshi – United People Global Champion, #UPGSustainability Leadership Class of 2025